bout religion to be unwilling to call that sacred which
they hold to be a lie, is that it will encourage unbelief.' That may be
a fair argument from Hindoos and Mohammedans; but it is strange in the
mouths of those who maintain missionary societies and support schools
and colleges--English education 'leads straight away from all points of
native orthodoxy.' 'How can we sow the seed and refuse to recognise the
crop?' When we have shut up our schools, renounced our famous
legislation, permitted infanticide and _suttee_, we may get credit for
sincerity in the objection; 'till then people will say that what we
really fear is not the spread of unbelief, but the hostility of
believers.' For such hypocrisy Fitzjames could never feel anything but a
righteous contempt.

I must now turn to the important legislative measures which were more
essentially a part of the general system of codification. A code of
civil procedure had been passed in 1859, and codes of criminal law and
criminal procedure in 1860 and 1861. The Indian Law Commission had also
prepared laws upon contract and evidence, which were still under
consideration; Fitzjames had to carry the process one stage further. In
regard to the famous Penal Code, of which he always speaks with
enthusiasm, his action was confined to filling up a few omissions. The
case of a convict in the Andaman Islands, for example, who had made a
desperate attempt to murder a gaoler, and could receive no further
punishment because he was already sentenced to imprisonment for life,
the maximum penalty for attempts to murder, suggested a flaw. Such
offences were henceforth to be punishable by death. The only point of
general interest was the case of seditious libels. A clause, prepared
for the original bill, had been omitted by an unaccountable accident.
Maine had already been in correspondence with Sir Barnes Peacock upon
this subject in 1869. When, however, in the summer of 1870, Fitzjames
proposed the insertion of a clause, it was supposed that he had hastily
prepared it in consequence of certain reported disturbances in the
previous spring. He was, therefore, taunted with having been a member of
the 'fourth estate,' and now desiring to fetter the liberty of the
press. He therefore confessed, and it must be admitted that it required
less courage in him than it had required in his grandfather to confess,
to the sin of having written for the newspapers. In point of fact,
however, as he pointed o